Give a good explanation of determinants?

I don't think this goes under H/W questions, as it's not a specific question needing solving, or a proof, etc.
Getting back to the point, anyone know any good websites or sources that give a good explanation of determinants? I mean what they do, why they do it, not just how to do it. I googled and got pretty boring stuff that tended to be either simply how to do them or just...well... lacking excitment.
Thanks!

Try to understand the formal properties (multilinearity) in terms of the interpretation as the volume of the parallelogram/parallelepiped (see the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinant" [Broken]).
Determinants may not be the most exciting thing you will ever learn, but absolutely essential in almost all fields of math and applications of math.